A Purple Passion? Queen’s College Oxford and the Blood of the Lord 63

The Queen’s College Oxford was founded in 1341 ‘under the name of the Hall of the Queen’s scholars of Oxford\u27 by the endowment of Robert de Eglesfield. The queen in question was Queen Philippa of Hainault, consort of King Edward III of England: Robert Eglesfield, who became Provost of the college, was her chaplain. The college statutes contain one tantalising passage that might or might not refer to something that we would regard as academic dress, which is contained in and discussed in the article. [Excerpt]

Canadian Infantry: Besting the Best

Review of Terry Copp, The Brigade: The Fifth Canadian Infantry Brigade, 1939-1945. Stoney Creek, ON: Fortress Publications, 1992

The woman and the portrayal of power: The stamp of Blanche de Castille

En el presente trabajo nos vamos a centrar en el análisis de la proyección del poder femenino a través de la sigilografía, que cuenta con la flor de lis como elemento heráldico distintivo, la plasmación como símbolo de poder del reino de Francia. Los sellos de reinas como Isabel de Hainault y Blanca de Castilla, nuestro caso de estudio, constituyen el mejor ejemplo de una mayor relevancia en el ejercicio del poder a partir de la segunda mitad del siglo XII, y ya en el XIII, su poder y su imagen se hicieron más fuertes. Sin embargo, el poder de Blanca de Castilla deviene en gran medida por su labor de mecenazgo más que por representación en el sello, muy diferente de su antecesora, pero siguiendo el modelo de Leonor de Aquitania, su abuela, y con quien quiso asimilarse como veremos en las grandes semejanzas existentes en la vida y obra de ambas reinasThe following paper is focused on the analysis of females power through sigillography, with the fleur-de-lys as the distinctive heraldic element depicting the power of the Kingdom of France. The stamps of the queens Elisabeth of Hainault and Blanche of Castile, our study case, are the best example of an increased power from the second half of the twelfth century through the thirteen century, when their power and image were strengthened. Blanche of Castile’s power, however, proceeds to a greater degree from her patronage rather than from her stamp representation, unlike her predecessor, yet following the model established by her grandmother, Eleanor of Aquitaine, who she attempted to resemble, as we shall see through the great similarities in the life and work of bot

The regime of Isabella and Mortimer 1326 - 1330

The rule of the Despensers was brought to an end in 1326 by a coalition of magnates, churchmen and Londoners, drawn together by the invasion of Isabella and Mortimer. A carefully orchestrated demand for the removal of Edward II led to his deposition and ultimately to his murder at Mortimer's direction. Power was centralised in the hands of Isabella and Mortimer who took no steps to broaden the basis of their government. While returning confiscated lands to their supporters, they offered them little else in the way of reward but accumulated land to their own use, Crown land in the case of Isabella and an empire on the Welsh March in the case of Mortimer. Disillusioned by this and by their exclusion from government, the constituent parts of the coalition fell apart. Active opposition which had begun in Edward II's lifetime culminated in Lancaster's abortive rebellion of 1328-29. The effective suppression of this meant that opposition was stifled by the imposition of recognisances and because several barons fled abroad. This success merely served to increase Mortimer's arrogance and in 1330 he successfully engineered the downfall of Edward III's uncle, the earl of Kent. In foreign affairs, the failure of the Weardale campaign against the Scots and the unpopular peace of Northampton, coupled with a temporising and indecisive policy towards France over the questions of Gascony and homage, increased hostility towards the government. At home violent unrest continued and an improvident and irresponsible attitude to national finance involved heavy borrowing at a time when Mortimer lived in extravagant state. Faced by this misgovernment and fearing that Mortimer now aimed at royal power, Edward III built his own supporting group around him. When the opportunity came he struck swiftly at Mortimer, sending him to execution and Isabella into retirement

Politics in Translation: Language, War, and Lyric Form in Francophone Europe, 1337-1400

This dissertation investigates the fraught relationship between England and French-speaking Continental Europe in the late fourteenth century by uncovering a contemporary cross-regional discourse that theorized this relationship. The dissertation examines the so-called formes fixes, an important lyric genre widely used across Francophone Europe in the late Middle Ages. It argues for this genre\u27s emergence as a privileged medium for Francophone poets to explore the difficulty of retaining trans-European cultural affinity during the rise of protonationalist and regionalist faction in the Hundred Years War. This was a long-term conflict ostensibly between England and France, lasting from 1337 until 1453, that involved multiple other European regions within its theater. The dissertation organizes itself around a large, but little studied, late medieval manuscript anthology of formes fixes lyric, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania, MS Codex 902 (formerly French 15). Never fully edited, the Pennsylvania manuscript is the largest, oldest, and most formally and geographically diverse formes fixes collection extant today. Chapter One argues that, unlike other, later, formes fixes anthologies, the Pennsylvania manuscript is not structured by author or sub-genre, but rather by form, chronology, geographic diversity, and dialectal difference. It thus reveals not only its compiler\u27s awareness of the diffusion of formes fixes lyric, but a desire to memorialize this genre\u27s transmission across regional divides. Chapter Two explores the political effects of the diffusion of formes fixes lyric by mapping literary borrowings between a corpus of anti-war texts in this anthology and other lyric corpora written in France, England, and the Low Countries. Chapter Three focuses on Francophone responses, both positive and negative, to the transmission of formes fixes lyric into England, centering on the implications of Eustache Deschamps\u27 praise of his English Francophone contemporary, Geoffrey Chaucer, as a great translator of formes fixes lyric. Chapter Four examines the adoption of formes fixes lyric in the work of Chaucer and his English Francophone contemporary, John Gower. It demonstrates that, like their Continental counterparts, Chaucer and Gower also view the appropriation of formes fixes lyric as a means of carving a geopolitically specific identity out of Francophone cultural belonging